Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Sunday, August 22, 2004
SUNDAY DEBATE: We need to repair a damaged Mississippi River
I am a conservationist who comes from a family now in its fourth generation of farming in the Midwest. As a young boy, I was president of both the local 4-H club and Future Farmers of America organization. Since 1968 I have worked on or near the river and have learned much about the river and observed firsthand how the river has changed.
I have seen how dredging, dams and dikes to accommodate navigation have damaged fish and wildlife habitat on the river and so we could live and farm in the floodplain.
Today, more than 1,000 miles of the river channel is "fixed in place" by more than 3,000 wingdams, miles of flood control dikes, and millions of cubic feet of annual dredging to provide for navigation. Today, less than 50 percent of the original floodplain fish and wildlife habitat is left, and the 36 locks and dams on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers have turned the free-flowing river into a series of pools filling up with sediment. Last week I testifyied at a hearing about the future of the river at a hearing of the Mississippi River. In a nutshell, I said:
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Congress have before them a great opportunity to affect the future of the Upper Mississippi River as they consider the results of the 10-year navigation study to be completed this fall. On behalf of Audubon, a national conservation organization with more than 500,000 members, we said:
- Ecosystem restoration should become an official project purpose on the Upper Mississippi River System. The Corps should recommend this and Congress should specifically enact this into law.
- Ecosystem restoration should be funded primarily at federal expense, with limited cost sharing. All ecosystem restoration projects on federal land should be 100 percent federally funded, and the cost share should be 65 percent federal and 35 percent non-federal on all other projects, including projects with non-profit organization partners.
- In implementing both ecosystem restoration and navigation improvements, Congress should require the Corps to use an "adaptive approach" and be required to periodically report back to them AND to the general public, on progress made and any proposed modifications to the program.
- Congress should fully fund a 50-year, $8.4 billion ecosystem restoration program. At $168 million per year, on average, that is still less than the $193 million per year the Corps spends, on average, for operation, maintenance and rehabilitation of the existing navigation system.
- We support a $218 million immediate authorization for non-structural and small-scale navigation improvements to improve navigation efficiency while the Corps continues to study and monitor the navigation system to evaluate future needs.
We need a healthy river environment and an efficient navigation system. We can have both, but not for free. It is time for the Corps and Congress to support restoration of a healthy river and to provide the funds to pay for the work that needs to be done. For too long the navigation system has been getting millions of dollars while funding for wildlife refuges and the Environmental Management Program have been drastically under-funded. It is time to bring federal investment on the Upper Mississippi River back into balance. We will all benefit — birds, fish, wildlife and people — by a restored river.
(Dan McGuiness can be reached at 651-739-9332 or dmcguiness@audubon.org.)
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